Inflation doesn’t spare even chicken feet, necks and carcass

Not even the chicken foot has escaped inflation. Throughout the pandemic, the rise in prices has even reached cuts of meat once despised by many Brazilians.

This is the case of Adriana Vieira, 35, who lives in Parque Santo Antônio, in the south of São Paulo. She says that, before the pandemic, she found the kilo of chicken neck and foot in the range of R$2 to R$3, but throughout the crisis, she has already paid more than twice as much.

Adriana lives with three children and an adult brother who had infantile paralysis. The family’s income comes from her brother’s BPC (Benefício de Prestação Continuada) and from the money she earns from time to time collecting cans and cardboard. Donations are also needed for daily sustenance.

“We buy the cheapest chicken meat, in addition to the egg. The egg has also gone up a lot, it’s almost impossible to buy a pack anymore”, says Adriana, who is looking for work in areas such as cleaning, in which she has experience.

In Perus, in the northwest of São Paulo, the educator Jandira Ribeiro, 74, usually looks for carcass and chicken feet, and she also noticed the difference.

“Today I bought foot. I paid R$ 11.90 per kilo, but a few weeks ago I paid around R$ 9. Before, I used to pay less than R$ 5 per kilo”, says the resident. In markets in the south and east, chicken feet were selling for R$8 a kilo.

In two butcher shops in the north of Rio de Janeiro, a kilo of chicken feet was between R$9 and R$10 in recent days. About a year ago, the values ​​were lower, in the range of R$ 6.

Elizabete Almeida Leite, a resident of Nova Iguaçu (RJ), in Baixada Fluminense, laments the effects of the crisis.

“This chicken neck, chicken foot, carcass thing, which was all cheap, R$ 2… 50 cents. Nowadays, a kilo of chicken feet is R$ 8.”

Unemployed and dependent on Auxílio Brasil, Elizabete says that the benefit is not enough to feed her family.

“I’m 54 years old and I want to work, because the worst thing is for you to see your daughter asking for cookies and you don’t have anything to give.”

Rising prices also contributed to hunger in the family of Ionara Jesus, from São Paulo, who is unemployed and has four daughters.

“We can find a kilo of chicken feet for R$12, for R$10, this is absurd to me. , R$ 10”, he says.

Cuts like these do not appear individually in the country’s official consumer inflation index, the IPCA (Broad Consumer Price Index), calculated by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).

A survey by the consultancy Safras & Mercado, however, gives a dimension of the rise in wholesale prices in the state of São Paulo. This cut evaluates the average values ​​in sales of refrigerators for supermarket chains or distributors.

On December 30, the price per kilo of chicken feet was R$ 2.90 wholesale in São Paulo. Almost seven months later, the value reached R$ 4.60 on July 8, equivalent to an increase of 58.6% this year.

In the same interval, the kilo of chicken neck rose 64.3%, from R$ 2.80 to R$ 4.60. Other cuts considered less noble also advanced, such as back (31.3%) and seasoned chicken carcass (10.5%).

According to the survey, chicken feet reached R$5 throughout 2021, but lost strength in the final stretch of last year. In 2022, it went up again.

For economist Fernando Henrique Iglesias, analyst at Safras & Mercado responsible for the survey, the high price reflects the heated demand for chicken meat, both in the domestic market and abroad, in addition to the increase in production costs.

“Chicken meat, despite having risen a lot, continues to have more competitive prices. Unable to eat beef, Brazilians go for chicken. We see high in other cuts, such as breast, thigh and drumstick”, he points out.

Basket of more affordable products rises 13%

Inflationary pressure has also affected other foods that tend to have more affordable prices and that, in times of tighter income, may appear more frequently on the Brazilian table, shows a survey by economist Matheus Peçanha, from FGV Ibre (Brazilian Institute of Economics of Getulio Vargas Foundation).

In the 12-month period up to June, a basket composed of seven of these items accumulated a high of 13.2% for the consumer, according to data from the IPC-DI, an index calculated by FGV Ibre in capitals.

The biggest increase was that of instant noodles: 19.35%. Mortadella (17.01%), eggs (16.95%), biscuits (15.85%), sausage or sausage (13.95%) and beef liver (1.64%) also rose in the period. The only drop was that of bovine muscle (-3.49%).

“The basket shows how food inflation, with the pressure of costs, was well disseminated. Even inferior goods had price escalation”, says Peçanha.

According to the economist, the food shortage should even slow down over the second half, but the trend is for prices still at a high level.

“It does not mean that they will go down. Some may register some stagnation. We have seen tax cuts, a truce in commodities, and there is no prospect of new climatic problems affecting prices until the end of the year. The prognosis is for a deceleration”, he indicates.

With the economic crisis, scenes of people looking for donations and even food leftovers spread across the country during the pandemic.

One of the most emblematic was that of a truck of bones and meat leftovers that started to be disputed in the south of Rio by a hungry group. The case gained attention in 2021.

Other metropolises also registered queues in search of donations of leftover ox bones.

Currently, 33 million people are hungry in the country, indicated the 2nd National Survey on Food Insecurity in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil, released in June. The contingent is similar to that registered 30 years ago.

A recent report by the consultancy Kantar also points out the impacts of inflation on consumption in the country.

One of the conclusions is that eating out has become a more difficult task with the increase in prices, and thus, part of the consumers has been exchanging full meals for smaller foods that have risen less.

With Wall Agency